How long before I can get out of this damned penguin suit? Black silk heated against Kevin’s hooked finger as he yanked at his bow tie, leaving it to dangle around his neck.
Purgatory didn’t seem to notice its owner’s discomfort. The re-opening night crowd was practically elbow to elbow, men in leather brushing up against men in sequins and lace, or latex, or not much of anything at all. And while the fire marshal was never going to find out about the packed house, the HVAC people were going to hear from the management first thing in the morning. Or the next day. Even Fae money might not be enough to get the air conditioning looked at on New Year’s Day.
Kevin hitched himself onto a bar stool, swiveling to eye the crowd. The cock pit was full to overflowing, and the patrons in the new VIP area certainly seemed to be enjoying the view—though Kevin was pleased to see that the ones who were enjoying it most were following house rules and had draped their oversized linen napkins across their laps. Public or private—no in-between, the signs all over the club read, in a half-dozen languages. Conall’s security channeling could only hide what was in public view.
The bartender—not Mac, the new assistant manager of Purgatory was out working the floor—set a drink on the bar next to Kevin. He picked it up without noticing it; he didn’t need to notice it, Mac had instructed the bar staff well, and he knew it would be his usual Jack and Coke.
“Tiernan would be proud.”
Speak of the devil. Conall was wrapped in a black silk robe with the Purgatory logo embroidered in red on the left shoulder. Kevin guessed the coil of rope in his hand and the eager anticipation in his peridot eyes meant he was on his way to meet Josh in the dungeon.
“I’d like to think so.” Kevin did his best not to choke on the words, or let his eyes well over. Again. The rest of the Demesne still thought they’d talked him out of his plan to turn the club over to Mac and his husbands, and he wasn’t ready for any of them to figure out his true intent just yet. And he still couldn’t hear the name of—couldn’t even think of—Purgatory’s real owner without feeling like someone had slipped a keen cold blade between his ribs.
Conall noticed something, of course. The ginger mage rested a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Let us know if you need anything.”
Us. The whole Demesne, plus Kevin’s dad, had circled wagons around one of their own in a most un-Fae way.
But for all their efforts, the only thing Kevin needed, they couldn’t give him. Still, he owed them thanks for trying. “G’ra ma agadh, Conall.”
He watched Conall work his way through the crowd, skirting the stage and heading for the curtained doorway giving access to the dungeon.
The hallway leading to the dancers’ dressing room—undressing room, really—was still more or less where it had been, off to the left of where Conall vanished; the room at the end of the hall, though, was as different from the old one as it was possible to imagine. Sloppily painted cinderblocks, thrift store folding chairs, and metal mirrors bolted to the walls had been replaced with a lounge at least as sybaritic as the VIP area, lacking only a hostess and personal bartender. Tiernan believed in taking care of the men who were the soul of the club, in a way the previous owner never had.
Had believed. Shit.
Kevin’s eyes burned. His chest felt tight. Ice cubes jingled in his glass with the shaking of his hand.
Distraction, I need a distraction. Preferably something other than reaching over the softly glowing bar and fumbling around for the leather portfolio containing the deed to the club and the paperwork proving the satisfaction of all the contractors’ liens, then finding Mac, handing him the works, and leaving Purgatory behind for good. No matter what he’d told the others, told his father. He couldn’t stay.
But he’d promised Tiernan’s memory that he was going to see opening night through, and fuck if he was going to break that promise, no matter how it ripped him up.
The dancers warming up the poles would have been a decent distraction, he supposed, if he’d been in any other mood. Garrett had hired two Hungarian brothers who specialized in dancing in stiletto heels that would have given Kevin a nosebleed if he’d ever tried so much as standing up in them.
As he watched, the lights went down, the DJ punched up the bass on the house music to the point where Kevin felt like he’d swallowed a vibrator, and tight spotlights lit up the two front poles, catching Tibor and Nikolasz halfway up. White light from the bar flared, too, flickering over the nearly-naked dancers.
Dear God. This is where it started. Where everything started.
Exactly here, on this same barstool. Kevin had been sitting right here, nursing a drink, numb and wondering what the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life after being denied partnership a second time. He’d been watching the dancers...
Kevin clenched his jaw against the groan trying to rise out of the ache in his chest. He’d been wrapped up in the dancers, then—hadn’t even noticed the presence behind him, until that first soft murmur in his ear.
“Enjoying the show?”
Kevin’s glass fell to the floor, shattering into a shrapnel grenade of crystal shards.
Warm breath caressed his ear; a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. Exactly the way it had that first night.
“The show? Remember?”
I’m not going to turn around. I don’t dare. If he turned, he’d know he was dreaming. Hallucinating. Insane. Just let me keep the dream a few seconds longer.
A warm tongue-tip ran around the curve of his ear. “Come on, lanan, I’ve been living for this for the last six or seven hundred years, could you at least look at me?”
There was no denying the raw hunger in the voice Kevin knew so well. But it seemed as if the room turned, spun, rather than he himself. And before he could make out any more of his husband’s features than a fall of golden hair, piercing blue eyes and a scruff of beard, he was crushed to a leather-clad chest.
And he was kissed. Jesus God, was he kissed. He could feel himself dissolving into that kiss, everything he was, everything he’d ever been, all the newborn effervescent thoughts of who he might be...
Christ, I’m thinking in threes. To the extent he was thinking at all.
And Tiernan, it seemed, was reading what was left of Kevin’s mind, whispering the Fae verse he’d written for their wedding, in threes-meter, between kisses and nips and soft involuntary growls.
“Before you all was dust, without you all would be ashes, to lose you would leave my soul empty for a silent eternity—”
An ungodly yowl cut off Tiernan’s urgent whisper; Kevin caught a glimpse of silver fur and impossibly long ears as something raced past the two of them and off into the crowd on the dance floor. And somewhere out in the throng, a puppy barked.
Kevin barely had time to brace himself as Tiernan sagged against him, laughing. “I should have known Cat wouldn’t be intimidated by a Fade-hound.”
“You brought a cat home with you?” The sight of Tiernan, the sound of his laughter, the scent of him all flowed into Kevin, filling places he hadn’t even realized were empty because he’d been so focused on the obvious ones. He was floating, flying, falling headlong into arms outstretched to catch him. Arms he’d been certain would never hold him again.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Fae laughter faded to a Fae smile that tried to be innocent and missed the mark by a mile. “It would be hard to figure out how to take him back.”
“Back? You mean, to the Realm?” Kevin caught at the edge of Tiernan’s soft leather vest, the easiest thing for him to grab at the moment, and tightened his grip till his knuckles went white. “If you think I’m letting you out of my sight for a second, for any reason—”
“Oh, but I do. You’re going to let me go long enough to let me Fade back into my office before anyone else notices me.” Tiernan’s hand closed over Kevin’s. “So you can welcome me home properly.” The smile was still there, but Tiernan’s voice was tight.
Kevin swallowed the sudden large lump in his throat. “Go.”
* * *
Tiernan’s recovered memories still sat oddly in him. The dimly-lit office with its glowing computer monitors was familiar, yet not, a place he had seen yesterday, and had not seen for centuries.
One memory, though, had never left him.
Hurry the fuck up, lanan.
The office—his office—was like a cocoon. He’d asked for it to be built that way, and the contractors had obliged. Outside, the pole dancers’ music shook the floor and the walls. Inside was as quiet as snowfall on water.
Not for long, though.
He leaned back against the desk, gripping the edge until the knuckles of his flesh-and-blood hand turned bone-white, staring at the wall.
He’d been able to feel the pull of Purgatory for days. Not the ley energy he’d sensed back when the site of the club had been a stable for carriage-horses, but the call of channeled magick. But it had been elusive, like the flicker of a flame.
Until a few minutes ago, when a sexual siren call had echoed between the worlds and stepping through had been as easy as Fading.
And then he’d been standing at the end of the bar, looking out at the dance floor over Kevin’s broad shoulder.
The door clicked open.
Closed.
“I thought I was dreaming.” Kevin’s voice was low, charged.
Taking a deep breath, Tiernan turned.
Kevin was leaning against the door, as if he needed help to stand. His eyes were red-rimmed, but the intensity of his gaze made Tiernan’s breath catch in his chest. “I’ve been standing out there, afraid to open the door.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid there was no one in here. That I’d imagined you.”
Tiernan crossed the room in two strides, sliding between Kevin and the thick soundproofed door and turning Kevin to face him. “If you want holding up, elafantabod, that’s my job, not the fucking door’s.”
“Oh, God.” Tiernan could feel a shiver run through his scair-anam’s body. “It really is you.”
Tiernan had spent the last thousand years searching for the combination of lust and laughter and love in Kevin’s dark brown eyes. And every moment of the search had been worth it.
“All it took to convince you was an f-bomb?” He traced his tongue-tip along Kevin’s lower lip, nipped gently at it.
“That and being called elephant-dick. Nobody else—” Kevin’s voice wavered, caught.
“No one else has the privilege.”
It was the most natural thing in two worlds to turn nips to kisses, a line of them searching down the rough column of his husband’s throat. Tiernan slid both hands under Kevin’s suit jacket, around to the small of his back, and drew him closer.
Close enough to feel the heat of a certain elafantabod, even through however many layers of clothing separated them.
A thousand years of waiting, searching, longing were a heartbeat from being over. All he had to do was unbuckle Kevin’s belt, unzip him, probably do something about the lower six inches or so of his dress shirt...
“Oh, fuck me senseless.”
“I thought that was the general idea, yes.” Kevin had let his head fall back to give Tiernan better access to his throat, but Tiernan could hear the smile he couldn’t see. “Or was that an order?”
Tiernan drew a deep breath, filling himself with all the scents of his scair-anam. Cologne and sweat and tears and musk, warm skin and thick dark hair and a hint of Jack and coke on breath as familiar to him as his own. “You’re going to laugh.”
“Would that be a bad thing? I’ve gone a very long time without.”
“I’ve been searching for you, waiting for this, for something like a thousand years. And now that I have you, I can’t make myself let go of you. Not even long enough to get you out of this monkey suit.”
Kevin’s head came up at this. “A thousand years?”
“Close enough. Time does strange shit in the Realm.”
Kevin seemed to be having trouble finding words. “You looked for me. For a thousand years.”
To lose you would leave my soul empty for a silent eternity... How little he’d understood when he penned those words to be part of his wedding vows. “I couldn’t lose you.”
The silence stretched out. And then Kevin’s hands, warm and strong, slipped down his back to cup his ass and hold him as close as skin, leaving a thrill of living magick in their wake.
“Funny thing... I don’t want to let go of you, either. Ever.”
A single perfect diamond fell from Tiernan’s eye.
“Never,” he whispered against Kevin’s already kiss-swollen lips. “Tseo mo mhinn ollúnta.”
This is my solemn vow.